HYB: February Surprise (reposted with carriage returns)
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: HYB: February Surprise (reposted with carriage returns)
  • From: t* s* <t*@yahoo.com>
  • Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 04:55:57 -0800 (PST)
I don't understand why sometimes my posts "wrap" nicely and other times
 they trail off forever to the right, but I find it very frustrating to
 try to read them so here's a reposting with added carriage returns for
 anyone who (like me) hates to have to keep scrolling to read. 
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I posted some pictures in February at the Iris-Photos forum. They show a
 seedling that is blooming indoors. It is from the cross: Iris variegata X
 Iris suaveolens var. rubromarginata. The cross was supposed to be a
 repeat (almost) of the cross that gave me CLOWN PANTS (which is from
 Iris variegata X Iris suaveolens var. mellita). Like before, I had
 to freeze pollen for several months to be able to do the cross. I
 have four seedlings growing in my basement; these germinated 
Spring of 2009. I never got around to getting them planted in the 
ground and it was starting to get cold again, so I decided to keep
 them indoors over the winter (along with all of my other 2009 
seedlings). Obviously this is not ideal, and it's getting pretty
 crowded under the lights. But now I'm kind of glad that this 
happened.
In February, I posted that two of the [variegata X rubromarginata]
seedlings had two increase fans and that one of these two 
seedlings was also trying to bloom. The bloom ended up just 
being a single flower barely emerging from the fan, but it 
was a bloom nonetheless. Chuck Chapman had commented that 
he had observed that increase fans starting to grow seemed
 to be correlated with flowerstalk growth. Chuck's observation
 is sounding more and more relevant, because now the other 
seedling with increase is sending up a flowerstalk too! Of
 all the seedlings that I've had growing indoors for extended 
periods of time (a year or more), I've never had any send up
 any kind of flowerstalks before. Some of the seedlings I've 
got indoors right now are much bigger and have been growing 
indoors for even longer, than these blooming ones. But none
 of the other seedlings has any increase fans.
So now to explain why I'm glad to have gotten to see 
this... CLOWN PANTS has a tendency (about half of the seasons) 
to send up a crop of repeat stalks. These start to bloom several
 weeks after the main/first flush has finished. However, 
CLOWN PANTS has never bloomed in the Fall for me. I do 
have two offspring of CLOWN PANTS now (CRICKET SONG and 
EASY SMILE) that have bloomed both Spring and Fall 
consistently for four years now. CRICKET SONG actually even 
sent up repeat stalks throughout the summer of 2009. So, with 
these experiences in mind, I really wanted to repeat the 
original cross that gave me CLOWN PANTS. My hope is that 
these two new seedlings are showing some of what I was 
hoping for... a willingness to bloom, even in the absence 
of normal cues/triggers.
If all goes well, I'll post pictures of the second 
seedling's bloom at the Iris-Photos forum in a couple of days.
Thanks, Tom

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